Give Thanks to your Partner

Level 2 in Thaatt is more complicated to absorb because we choose to thank a “stranger”, in the sense that there are no biological connections between us and the other person. In this case, everything becomes harder because the person we choose as our partner won’t be “biologically” inclined to fully accept us as a parent would do instead.

We tend to forgive a partner much less than we would forgive a son or daughter. Just imagine your reaction if your partner were to behave like your son or daughter…perhaps even like your teenage son or daughter!
How long would you be willing to accept his/her mood swings for? His constant demands for attention, his constant need for approval? Not long uh?

A partner should be someone who, after the 1st level along the thanking process, is able to: Handle his/her own anger Accept moments of frustration Listen and have others listen to him/her.

Basically, he or she should be someone who is ready to interact with others and grow with another person. However, most times, it isn’t so: on the contrary, usually we look for someone expecting him or her to fill our own voids.
At the beginning, all is perfect. Passion, in fact, is an excellent “doping agent” and pushes us all beyond our limits. In those moments, we don’t show our best selves…in those moments we are NOT ourselves but the image that we would like to show about ourselves.

This is not negative per se (trying to improve ourselves is never negative). It becomes negative, in fact, when our source of love and awareness is too small for us to be able to live a life according to such rhythms.
It is not a bad thing to admit that we have limits. It is actually delightfully natural to do so! Problems arise when we exceed limits for too long. From that point on, a great anger starts building up inside of us and we are faced with two possible choices:
1) Acknowledge that we have behaved like idiots
2)Blame the other person for our physical and psychological exhaustion.
Which do you think will be the obvious choice? The second one of course!
Admitting that we sometimes behave like “First-class Idiots” seems to be something that goes beyond our abilities, but it is essential to accept it if we want to reach Level 2 along the Thaatt path.

We are not aware of it but we keep looking for those people who can help us grow. However, we make a fundamental mistake: we believe that these people will, magically, be able to calm our anxieties and fill the empty spaces in our lives….mhmmmmm….difficult to do….even because the people that we meet have, in turn, anxieties and voids too.
What should we do then? Well, I don’t know if there is any “universal recipe” but, as far as you and I are concerned, let us try and follow some small “steps” together. When faced with a crisis, we should:

It is important to let our feelings out without blaming the other person for them.

A possible way to express them could be: “What you did/said made me angry. I am not mad at you but, right now, I am very angry”.
This whole sentence could be summarised in a single word: “Fuck you!”.
Even if this can seem like a strong insult, it is not so if both partners interpret it as an outburst and not an attack.
Obviously, after such a “fuck-everyone phase”, a phase of anger processing and one of confrontation must follow, first with ourselves and then with the partner. After, the “processing” is over, if we have avoided attacking our partner successfully, we discover that it isn’t the word “Sorry” which we need to say but the word “Thank you”. And believe us when we say that the difference between the two words is huge.

This refers to the moment when we admit our own limits.
Sometimes, even though we love our partner, we don’t want him or her around, he or she bothers us and we don’t even understand why.
When this happens, it is better to act as ourselves and to tell the partner about our needs by making sure we reassure him or her about the way we feel:“Listen, I love you and this has nothing to do with our relationship as a couple, but I need some time alone. Right now your presence is not helping me”.
Of course, this can work if the partner, in turn, doesn’t look for any hidden meaning in words like the ones mentioned above (for example, “This is it, he/she wants to break up with me and doesn’t have the courage to tell me so”) and gives the other person the space he or she asked for.

The weaker your Level 2 is (or that of your partner), the more you will feel attacked by him or her and the harder it will be to achieve the needed inner peace that will allow you to see those attacks not as a threat to your survival but as an opportunity for growth because emotions are exclusively yours and belong to nobody else but you … nobody else has the power over you … if you are centered, nothing can upset you.